Rock Art Rules

June 13, 2004|By DAVID K. LEFF David K. Leff is deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection and a member of the Place board of contributors. His nonfiction book, ``The Last Undiscovered Place,'' was recently published by the University of Virginia Press.

Some seem poised to leap, startling even the calmest driver. Others stand silent sentinel, as if guarding the street. But roadside rock outcrops and boulders painted like huge, cartoonish animals are neither about to jump nor watchful. They merely illustrate human imagination embedded in our landscape. That is the essence of rock art.

A large rock on Route 44 in Eastford depicts a bloated frog with a dour expression. On the opposite side of the state, a smaller amphibian sporting a bright red tongue pops out of a ledge on Route 7 in Cornwall. The Simsbury Farms Golf Course is home to a chubby, toad-like critter. A turtle in blue and purple crawls toward the Hammonassett Connector in Madison, while another looks across the highway in Marlborough. Sparky the Dalmatian stands watch outside the Montville Firehouse, and a martial-looking eagle seems to fly from a ledge on Route 66 in Hebron. Though animals get much of the attention, American flags can be found painted on rocks in many towns, and almost anything else is possible, from a frivolous smiley face in East Granby to a sedate drum on Barbourtown Road in Canton.

Rock art contributes a sense of identity and injects a playful spirit into the countryside. Newcomers are startled, frequent travelers see a milestone and residents find a reassuring sense of home. Inasmuch as the rocky face of Connecticut was carved by the last great ice sheet of 10,000 years ago, our painted schist and gneiss are a melding of art and nature, the glacier in conspiracy with human creativity.

State Archeologist Nicholas Bellantoni finds Connecticut's painted rocks akin to the pictographs created in caves and on cliffs thousands of years ago. Although today we have a rainbow of colors where ancient people contented themselves with a mixture of red ochre, grease and water, the frequent use of animal images is an experience shared over millenniums. Like the ancients who included in their work inexplicable geometric and abstract shapes, we paint the Stars and Stripes, a symbol of great significance that would have been a puzzle to them. Perhaps contemporary rock art serves to make up for Connecticut's lack of ancient pictographs; certainly there are parallel motivations and mysteries.

The oldest object in Connecticut's roadside gallery may be Eastford's pale green frog, squatting among the trash and broken pavement of an abandoned roadside picnic area. Some sources say it was painted in 1881 by state legislator T. J. Thurber, although other dates have been suggested. Eastford's town historian finds the Brobdingnagian creature's origins a mystery, while local resident Margaret Day, enjoying her ninth decade, recalls picnicking beside the great frog with her children. ``It's always been there,'' she says. Regardless of the actual date, it's not hard to imagine a state legislator of yore envisioning a giant frog as he passed the site numerous times on the fatiguing trip to the Capitol while he fretted over taxes, roads and the fate of local agriculture.

Roadside rock art is often enveloped in mystery. With its irreverent red tongue, Cornwall's frog is regularly maintained, but its origin is a legend and current caretaker a rumor. Even the proprietor of Baird's General Store, who hears most town scuttlebutt, was at a loss. A few calls revealed only a story that the creature was created in the 1930s by highway workers with a few spare moments and some leftover paint.

Roadside rocks may be unchanging, but not necessarily so their painted images. Hebron's eagle has been both a whale and a frog, according to Town Clerk Carla Pomprowicz. Today, the martial-looking raptor with piercing eyes -- the brainchild of an artistic high school student in the late 1980s -- seems so apt as to have been teased out of the stone rather than painted on it. Nevertheless, some future Picasso may find something else in the ledge's bulges and fissures.

New work still appears, like Marlborough's box turtle, which debuted last year not far down Route 66 from the eagle. Boldly rendered using yellow and orange accents, it was conceived by town elderly agent Vi Schwarzmann after brush cutting revealed a hidden ledge. Searching for a whimsical way to celebrate her town's bicentennial, she brought the rock to life by combining paint and brushes with enthusiastic kids. The youngsters experienced a sense of pride and a little poison ivy; the town got a new landmark.

Today's roadside rock artists share a tradition thousands of years old, but despite the passing centuries, the reasons that people see images in geological formations or decide to paint them remain largely an enigma. Nevertheless, these artistic endeavors indicate we are still tied to the land in ways not fully understood. The urge to paint animals or symbols on natural features comes to the surface unexpectedly. It finds expression in full public view, on the arteries of travel that most define us as Americans.